Issues
There are many ways for improving hopper flows
- Flow properties of the powder may be changed using chemical additives
- Wall friction can be reduced
- Use of external excitations
- pneumatic - air blasters, or air-jets
- mechanical - hammer, arms, screws
- vibrations - side mounted, bin activators (“live” bottoms)
The problems with external excitations are:
- unpredictable performance of commercial devices
- there may be detrimental effect on the state of the mixture upon discharge (size segregation/de-mixing may occur)
- may be difficult to control the discharge rate